processing

Something sad happened at our house recently. I’m still kind of thinking it all through, so I haven’t mentioned it until now. On Sunday, a neighborhood dog broke into our yard and mauled one of our four hens. When I found Fanny, her best buddy Clara was leaning against her in the snow, and Fanny was alive, but her eyes were closed. I think she was in shock. When I examined Fanny, I realized what would have to happen. Fanny was badly hurt and in a lot of pain, so we had to put an end to her life.

I’d thought some of this through before this unfortunate incident happened—predators are everywhere, even in the city, and chickens are vulnerable to everything from raccoons to dogs to hawks. I’d also been encouraged to ask myself: are these pets? Why do we have them here with us? Will they go to the vet like any other pet, or are these more like farm animals? Our primary motivation for having hens was to have healthy eggs, and for the boys to have the experience of helping with the production of our family’s food. I wanted them to understand the cycle of life, to pick fresh eggs out of the nesting box, to see how our scraps can be turned into protein; how their compost can feed our garden, and so on. In a culture where most of us have no idea where the food we eat even came from, I wanted them to grow up exposed to a healthier model than that. I also wanted them to see that the animals we rely on for food can be treated humanely, that we owe them that respect and a chance at a good life. But I also knew that they weren’t going to be pets. It is possible to save a bit of money having your own backyard chickens, but a single vet bill could wipe that out for years. And if a chicken got hurt, it wouldn’t be kinder to wait for a vet to put it down – our hesitation to be merciful by handling that deed ourselves would be a cruelty to that chicken. And what would we do when our hens aged and stopped laying? We can only have 6 hens at a time – would we be willing to have all those spots taken up by hens that didn’t lay anymore?

I eat meat. Not a lot, and most of it from sustainable, humane sources, but I do eat it and I’m not conflicted about that as long as those animals were treated decently (and the vast majority of animals used for meat are not treated decently, not even close). If that is the case, then would it not be consistent to be at peace with allowing our relatively pampered hens to be processed humanely after their productive laying days are over? To me, that made sense. We would treat our hens kindly, even affectionately, feed them the best food available, allow them to roam as much as we are able to let them, and make sure they had an overall good life as long as they produced eggs with some consistency. By deciding they were essentially farm animals and not pets, we were keeping them as part of our food chain by providing food, not just using more of the world’s resources for some new hobby. Having backyard hens was not just another way to consume; it was part of bringing a little of our food source closer to home, where we could control how humanely the animal was treated and what went into its feed. Having thought quite a bit about all this, not to mention reading both “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and Barbara Kingsolver's latest book this past summer,  I was somewhat prepared for the circumstances we dealt with last week. What I wasn’t prepared for was how this experience would connect two halves of a whole.

We had some choices to make. Animal control had been called by the neighbor, and they wanted to know what our plan was for the “body”. We could have had them take her for a fee, or we could process her for the soup pot. Putting an entire large dead chicken into the garbage to attract even more predators was not an option.

Even now I can not completely explain it, but processing her absolutely felt like the right thing to do. If this magnificent bird with the kind eyes, who provided compost and eggs, and ate our slugs and weeds, was not longer with us, would it really be the rational thing to do to then treat her as a pet only after the end of her life – when it didn’t benefit her at all? Did it not make more sense to respect her purpose here with us by making full use of the nourishment she could provide for a family? Wasn’t the only thing holding me back just the disconnection most of us have from the reality that meat comes from live animals? But could I really process a chicken with a name in my city home?

J had done the actual killing, certain that it would make a complete wreck out of this animal lover. He was mistaken, I think, but I love him dearly for it anyway, because, really, what says true love better than a vegetarian who insists upon killing a chicken for his wife's sake?* His job was done, though, the processing part was mine if anyone was going to do it. I decided to go ahead with it.I called my buddy Peat, our local urban chicken expert, and he walked me through what processing a chicken would entail, and then I looked at a few pictures online to get a better idea of what was involved. I let the blood flow into a pan for an hour, and then put her into boiling water for two minutes to loosen the feathers. I painstakingly plucked the feathers, cut off the legs, then removed the scent gland and the organs, and put her into a pan of ice cold water. Somewhere along the process, the sanitized form of a chicken that we all recognize began to emerge – the pink shrink-wrapped chicken we all see lined up in the grocery store refrigerator case. There was a wide and messy gulf in between Fanny the bird with the kind eyes and that bird we see in the grocery store, and I realized that this work was about everything in that in-between, the literal blood and guts we never have to face when we order a chicken sandwich or toss some chicken breasts into our cart at the grocery store.  That gulf was bridged, two halves of a real whole reconnected as I found myself hunched over the sink, plucking and cutting, pulling and washing. There was something sane, even spiritual about the process even as I also grieved the loss of a beautiful animal.

When I reached inside the plucked bird to pull out the insides, a waiting pan beside me in which to transfer the un-needed organs, the first thing I discovered was a bright orange orb by her vent – a large yolk not yet surrounded by albumen and shell. As my arm moved further inside the bird, I discovered yolk after yolk, each a bit smaller than the last, the final one the size of a pearl. I lined them up in a row, fascinated to realize that each egg’s potential had existed within her weeks earlier.

If you’d asked me to imagine what it would be like to discover one of our hens hurt by an animal, and asked me also what would be hardest about that experience, I’m fairly certain I would have said that ending her life would be the hardest part, and that I didn't think I could process a chicken that had a name. I was wrong about both of those assumptions. The hardest part was seeing her buddy Clara huddled beside her in the snow, and seeing Fanny herself hurt and suffering for any time at all.  I felt terrible that I’d let that happen. The killing, though, was a relief, an act of mercy that couldn’t have come soon enough. The boiling and the plucking and all the rest were acts of respect for her life and it’s purpose, a life well and happily lived, and for our ability to provide a good life for any future animal that comes into our care. We will be adding three more pullets this spring, bringing our total to six. We look forward to many more years of tending a clucking backyard flock, of very small-scale animal husbandry, knowing that we can handle whatever comes and learn from the experience as we go.  I won't process a hen again myself unless it's an emergency - mostly out of respect for my neighbors -  but there are other places in town to have that done humanely and inexpensively if we need to.

While too much exposure can desensitize, none also makes it easy to ignore the sources of our food.If anything, this experience has made me more determined to be consistent in avoiding meat that I don’t know anything about. More and more options for non-CAFO meat are available, at least around here. It costs more, but we try to balance that out with some inexpensive beans-and-rice type meals every week. J is still mostly vegetarian, and the boys are starting to eat a little meat here and there when they ask for it. The boys didn’t see any of what happened, and I did the processing when they were thankfully napping, but we did choose to share some information with them. They know our flock well enough to notice Fanny’s absence. We told them that Fanny was hurt, and we had to help her die. They took this in stride, as they have in general when we’ve talked about what “meat” is, but they often say “Fanny died” out of nowhere. This kind of thing might actually be a whole lot harder a couple of years from now. When we go to the grocery store, N or O always point to the chickens and says “those are processed”. I always remind them, in the simplest way I can, that anyone who processes and eats an animal has a responsibility to be kind to that animal first as long as it’s alive. I’ll miss Fanny, but I’m grateful, at least, for the opportunity to be more connected to the reality of where my food comes from, and that we're making some choices to make that a reality we can live with.

(Fanny was the buff hen on the left) 

 

*This is an edit/addition - I somehow (and accidentally) left this paragraph out when I posted yesterday.

 

Comments

[Jess]

Your story was so touching and beautifully written. I have been wrangling with the idea of starting my own feathered urban clan and the very situation you describe is my biggest fear. Thank you for writing about it and letting me know what to expect from such a sad situation.
Your description of how you hope having the chickens will help your boys regain a comprehension of the value of humane treatment and food cycle was an inspiration for my own future brood.

[Meika]

Oh, poor Fanny... poor Clara. :-( That was really the saddest part of this event to me, too. I don't know how I would react to processing a "chicken with a name", but I value hearing how you responded - indeed, a fitting way to honor this life.

[Emmie (Better Make It A Double)]

Lisa - it's still in the freezer, but this week I plan on making soup. I will use all I can of the meat, including using the bones and neck to flavor the broth. I've actually done that before several times because I buy "chicken soup parts" from free-range chickens through a local food buying club sometimes. I've liked doing that, because it makes wonderful broth and those parts usually don't have a market. And yes, I will eat it, and I think I will be able to do that without hesitation. I can't totally explain it, but it's really OK, not the part about her getting hurt, but everything after. It feels different than I imagined, and that's not a bad thing.

[Lisa]

Wow, that's really gutsy of you. I think I would have chickened (cringe) out. But your reasoning and thought into this make a whole lot of sense. More people (including me) should put so much thought and sensitivity into understanding where their food comes from.

So....not to be morose, but did you eat it? I think I might have had to give it away to someone else, but I'm a big weeny.

[caro]

Wow. What an amazing experience, and what great writing about it. And WOW, the yolks you found! THAT is fascinating. Did you have any idea those would be there? It's like a little treasure, learning that. Talk about having no idea where our food comes from. Omelet lover though I am, I don't know what sort of alchemy I was imagining inside of a chicken ... (Poof! Eggs materializing out of nothing!) Anyway, what an intense day that must have been. Rest in peace, Fanny. And, um ... bon appetit, Emmie?

[sster]

Thank you for this post. I am having a meat-related crisis of my own and your words here have been enormously helpful. You know, just two generations ago my father's family had this relationship with animals. My father moved off the farm and into a profession so there are things like this I didn't have the privilege of learning first-hand.

As always, brilliant writing...I hope your book of essays is forthcoming :)

[Jody]

What a beautiful hen she was. I think you did the right thing. And the image of Clara grieving will stay with me for a while.

[Eva]

I'm sorry to hear about the unfortunate circumstances leading to her death, but I'm glad you were able to deal with it in a way that was comfortable for you. I used to work with chickens but I'd never seen the eggs in development like that--so interesting. When we move to the Swedish countryside, we plan to have ducks and/or chickens, and will probably have to figure out how to handle similar circumstances.

[Amber]

wow. what an incredible experience. It brings tears to my eyes to picture Clara by Fanny.